Saturday, February 1, 2014

It’s alive! It’s alive!

This is the big excitement of my day so far, so please bear with me.

It has to do with our coffee maker, and that’s a pretty damned important subject. At least here at the Ponderosa.

We have one of those Tassimo gizmos, and we quite like it. A cup of coffee can be anywhere from 50 to 65 cents a pop, with some varieties being well over 80 cents, but just the same there’s no waste, and you get whatever fancy schmancy flavour your little heart desires.

Travelling Companion likes Nabob’s Cafe Crema,

And as for me, I’ll drink most anything that’s on sale. Well, providing that it’s not overly fancy schmancy. I can’t abide by flavoured coffees. Bleah!

Well really, I prefer this one:

Anyhoodle, from time to time the machine comes up with a little light that tells you that it needs to be cleaned, which I dutifully did. However, it didn’t seem to be behaving itself, and was determined to simply pump all the water straight through the machine until it ran dry.

That’ll never do.

So I dragged out our drip coffee maker that we keep downstairs that serves as both a back up as well as the go to machine for when we have copious coffee drinkers waiting for their java fix. You can’t very well serve 10 guests coffee from the Tassimo gizmo unless you’re willing to stand there for quite some time. It does one cup at a time after all.

I had it sitting there hanging over the edge of the sink because I’ve never had good results trying to prop a container under the thing when it's doing its purge.

I also found a tiny little piece of foil lodged in the spigot when I took it apart, but it still didn’t want to behave. I just figured its time had run out, and started looking on line for a new one.

I left the machine overnight, and it’s now working. Maybe a bit of moisture where it shouldn’t be? Coffee makers are that weird combination of electricity and water that I’ve always wondered about.

It might be time for a back up machine, but I’d prefer to get one on sale.

Just thought I’d keep it handy to the sink there while testing it out. Didn’t explode.

I’m now on my (*mumble*) cup for the day, and all is well.

It’s snowing out, but we don’t care.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Any Super Bowl predictions? I’m saying Denver by three points. But I really have no clue.

We've been buying Costa Rican coffee since we're here... it's okay, I guess.... but a little Baileys would make it better. You can tell I'm not much of a coffee drinker.... but your machine sounds pretty serious.

My needs have simplified. I was a coffee snob in the '70s when there was no good coffee to be had, and now I just need my morning maintenance cup and have settled on a drip machine that is black so that I don't have to clean it all the time. The white ones were killing me.

We've had several Keurig coffee makers, my bonnie bride is a coffee fiend (me I can't get the foul and evil liquid down). We've had to do a regular run through of vinegar several times a year to keep the insides clean.

Even doing that, after a couple of years, they're done in and have to be replaced. I guess they get some kind of internal build up of mineral from the water.

Still cheaper in the long run making one cup at a time instead of brewing a whole pot and only drinking a cup or two and tossing the rest.

I've always preferred a cup of coffee to taste like a cup of coffee & not some kind of fancy milkshake. If I want a coffee to taste like a frapped wiggenstinker I'll just go to Dairy Queen. I only drink one cup of real coffee a day now & if I do have a second one while traveling it's probably from McDonalds. Hey, works for me & I ain't no darn connoisseur either.......:))

We just use an old fashioned 12 cup maker. Dare I confess that when we don't finish the entire pot, we will sometimes drink it warmed up in the microwave the next morning (GASP!!). It's not that bad if you put a little cream in it!

Well, I've been getting too many spam comments showing up. Just a drag, so we'll go another route and hope that helps. So, we won't be hearing anything more from Mr. Nony Moose. I guess I'll just have to do without that Gucci purse.